I'll answer that one, since I recall checking one out at Best Buy: Clunky. Dreary-looking. Foolish and wasted use of Wi-Fi for silly "squirting" feature. Mediocre control mechanism. Reportedly (IIRC) the Zune software on PCs was initially pretty flaky, and needed a lot of work. There was about no reason at all to buy one instead of an iPod - the bestselling model at the time was the nano; around the same time of the Zune's intro, Apple released the sleek aluminum-clad second-generation model in a variety of shiny colors. Just no contest.

edit: dug up a Engadget review, if you want to go down memory lane. They compare it to the high-capacity iPod in the pictures, but the true competition was this.

Man, I always wonder why people give Zune such a hard time. Years before NFC would become a thing, Microsoft had a way that you could share content from one device to another if they were in proximity, without having to actually know how to set up an ad-hoc connection. It was relatively simple, and let you give people songs that they wanted to listen to, and they could listen up to three times before it asked you to buy it. Hell, I'd take that feature NOW, on any service. Rather than having to use Soundhound to find what song it is, or write it down, you could just, you know, get the damn song and listen to it right then and there, and then buy it. "Squirting" was a really, really stupid name for sharing content. I'd still do that TODAY, on my phone, if it existed. With NFC, it'd be really, really easy to do. Microsoft was about 5 years ahead of the times, from where I stand.

The Zune desktop software was weak sauce at first, but within the first year it became what it is today-- still my second-favorite desktop media software. The style of it was much cleaner than iTunes, it was easier to find artist information, and it had smart playlists before iTunes IIRC. It was, quite simply, easier than iTunes at managing playlists and finding content. Oh, and the screensaver, displaying artist info, covers from all your music, and live updating information on the numbers of times that album/band/song had been played, was beautiful. If Spotify hadn't come around, I'd still be using Zune as my default player.

Zune also had the idea of Zune Pass-- a music subscription service that netted you unlimited plays of songs you didn't own, that let you download those songs for offline playing alongside the music you already owned, and also gave you 10 songs a month that you could pick and own. It also had a radio mode that let you select a song, album, artist, or playlist and made a playlist of similar songs, including ones you owned and didn't owned. This was 3-4 years before Spotify.

The problem was yes, it was late. And by the time Microsoft got out the ZuneHD (which was actually one of the nicest-looking MP3 players, IMHO), they were behind on the metric that mattered: apps. But there were also features about Zune that people want to shit on, but were actually quite ahead of their time (I wonder if people will insult the Zune for having a radio if Apple lets their devices access the radio).

Microsoft, more than anything else, suffers from a serious lack of "cool". Even when they're ahead of the pack, people don't recognize it. In part, it's because of their marketing. Nobody will ever, ever "squirt" something. That doesn't make the actual action of sending someone a usage-limited track is a bad idea. (Also, if the "squircle" was such a bad idea, why did Apple patent it for all their app icons? note: just kidding, relax). Microsoft might miss the boat sometimes, but the reality is that the products are often judged on sales, not on the ideas.

Zune actually had a lot going for it. Not as much as the iPod touch, mind you, but Zune did have a lot of good ideas. And it was the first taste of metro, which is a visual style I very much do enjoy.

AirPlay is different, it lets you play content from one device to another device. It doesn't keep that content on the other device. Squirting actually left both people with a copy of the song, only the new copy was DRM'd and only allowed to play three times. iTunes sharing doesn't, AFAIK, allow you to send to a device registered to a different iTunes account. They simply act as ways of putting your own content new places. Squirting was a way of gifting people the right to sample content. It's closer to Amazon lending than it is to AirPlay. Though I'll admit, it would have been a LOT more awesome if you could share with more devices. It was still a cool feature. With other people that had Zunes (what few of us there were), I had a good time saying "hey, check out this track", and being given music that I should listen to. It was a good way of doing social discovery much more organically.

Also, the Zune had wifi sync 3 years before iTunes, which negated much of the need for "squirting" to PCs.

I ditched mine for an iPod touch, but that doesn't mean that there aren't things that I think Zune did better than any other device. At the time, it did sharing music really, really well. You could also send people tracks through Zune, see what they were listening to, and comment on it. Basically, the Zune service was Spotify before Spotify was Spotify. And the devices had a great way to share content before NFC. If they had XBox Music on every platform available, and if it was NFC-aware such that tapping devices sent the currently playing song to the device with DRM, it'd be a really dead-simple way of sharing.

Like I said, Zune was nowhere near perfect (I did abandon mine, after all). But it did have some things that were ahead of their time. Squirting, while horribly named, was a step in the right direction. The fact that it is now HARDER to share content with people is a bad thing.

I understand you paint Apple with the same 'anti-consumer' brush, but I think it's important to highlight that Apple's touch is very, very, light, to the point that it isn't even an annoyance for the average consumer.

Look, I was talking about Microsoft at the moment and being very scathing. At that moment, I didn't give a damn about Apple. It isn't always about Apple, you know.

But, what a strange hypothetical. Am I supposed to derive comfort that you think Apple would create such a jury-rigged scheme and only screw me over somewhat without even solving the second hand sale problem?

"Squirting" was a really, really stupid name for sharing content. I'd still do that TODAY, on my phone, if it existed. With NFC, it'd be really, really easy to do. Microsoft was about 5 years ahead of the times, from where I stand.

Microsoft, more than anything else, suffers from a serious lack of "cool". Even when they're ahead of the pack, people don't recognize it. In part, it's because of their marketing. Nobody will ever, ever "squirt" something. That doesn't make the actual action of sending someone a usage-limited track is a bad idea.

IIRC "squirting" was never an official name or used in any official marketing material, it was just a nickname (codename?) the development team had for the feature that caught on after being slipped in a few developer interviews. If it was a problem it wasn't marketing's problem.

"Squirting" was a really, really stupid name for sharing content. I'd still do that TODAY, on my phone, if it existed. With NFC, it'd be really, really easy to do. Microsoft was about 5 years ahead of the times, from where I stand.

Microsoft, more than anything else, suffers from a serious lack of "cool". Even when they're ahead of the pack, people don't recognize it. In part, it's because of their marketing. Nobody will ever, ever "squirt" something. That doesn't make the actual action of sending someone a usage-limited track is a bad idea.

IIRC "squirting" was never an official name or used in any official marketing material, it was just a nickname (codename?) the development team had for the feature that caught on after being slipped in a few developer interviews. If it was a problem it wasn't marketing's problem.

[You've got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they're hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion? Is YouTube really some permanent, long-term thing, or is it a fashion? I'm not saying it is a fashion. But every time we do valuations, I wonder if we can afford to keep this hot for 10 years. I'm sure somebody at Google has got to do the same analysis, because even $1.6 billion is more than 1% of their market cap.

"Yeah, that YouTube thing, that's just a fad, that's not going anywhere!"

"Squirting" was a really, really stupid name for sharing content. I'd still do that TODAY, on my phone, if it existed. With NFC, it'd be really, really easy to do. Microsoft was about 5 years ahead of the times, from where I stand.

Microsoft, more than anything else, suffers from a serious lack of "cool". Even when they're ahead of the pack, people don't recognize it. In part, it's because of their marketing. Nobody will ever, ever "squirt" something. That doesn't make the actual action of sending someone a usage-limited track is a bad idea.

IIRC "squirting" was never an official name or used in any official marketing material, it was just a nickname (codename?) the development team had for the feature that caught on after being slipped in a few developer interviews. If it was a problem it wasn't marketing's problem.

[You've got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they're hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion? Is YouTube really some permanent, long-term thing, or is it a fashion? I'm not saying it is a fashion. But every time we do valuations, I wonder if we can afford to keep this hot for 10 years. I'm sure somebody at Google has got to do the same analysis, because even $1.6 billion is more than 1% of their market cap.

"Yeah, that YouTube thing, that's just a fad, that's not going anywhere!"

(throws chair across room)

Youtube has become an essential service for the web, but I have no idea whether or not it actually brings Google any profit. Might be a cost centre.

[You've got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they're hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion? Is YouTube really some permanent, long-term thing, or is it a fashion? I'm not saying it is a fashion. But every time we do valuations, I wonder if we can afford to keep this hot for 10 years. I'm sure somebody at Google has got to do the same analysis, because even $1.6 billion is more than 1% of their market cap.

"Yeah, that YouTube thing, that's just a fad, that's not going anywhere!"

(throws chair across room)

Now I envision a series of three-panel comic strips about Ballmer where the last panel is always him throwing a chair across the room.

Who cares? I mean, it's great that intel stripped down an Atom SoC to the point where it can kinda sorta compete with ARM, but what's the value proposition? Smartphones don't have any legacy x86 code to worry about. X86 has absolutely no advantage in mobile. Meanwhile, any phone/tablet vendor can license ARM and build what they want/need.

There is no advantage in having the same software across multiple devices? It's not like phone SoCs are only useful in consumer phones.

No. I'm not running the "same software" on my phone as I am on my desktop. I don't want to. x86 owns the desktop/laptop because of 30 years of desktop/server software. None of that is relevant to handheld devices. Windows Mobile was basically Windows on a phone, and it sucked ass.

[You've got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they're hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion? Is YouTube really some permanent, long-term thing, or is it a fashion? I'm not saying it is a fashion. But every time we do valuations, I wonder if we can afford to keep this hot for 10 years. I'm sure somebody at Google has got to do the same analysis, because even $1.6 billion is more than 1% of their market cap.

"Yeah, that YouTube thing, that's just a fad, that's not going anywhere!"

(throws chair across room)

Now I envision a series of three-panel comic strips about Ballmer where the last panel is always him throwing a chair across the room.

Who cares? I mean, it's great that intel stripped down an Atom SoC to the point where it can kinda sorta compete with ARM, but what's the value proposition? Smartphones don't have any legacy x86 code to worry about. X86 has absolutely no advantage in mobile. Meanwhile, any phone/tablet vendor can license ARM and build what they want/need.

There is no advantage in having the same software across multiple devices? It's not like phone SoCs are only useful in consumer phones.

No. I'm not running the "same software" on my phone as I am on my desktop. I don't want to. x86 owns the desktop/laptop because of 30 years of desktop/server software. None of that is relevant to handheld devices. Windows Mobile was basically Windows on a phone, and it sucked ass.

Yeah, I should have mentioned that there might be markets outside consumer phones. Oh, I did.

And wow, there might be markets outside what Jim Z wants. Amazing.

Not like x86 software is installed on small or embedded devices anywhere. Oh, it is. Why would they want smaller, more powerful and more efficient hardware?

[You've got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they're hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion? Is YouTube really some permanent, long-term thing, or is it a fashion? I'm not saying it is a fashion. But every time we do valuations, I wonder if we can afford to keep this hot for 10 years. I'm sure somebody at Google has got to do the same analysis, because even $1.6 billion is more than 1% of their market cap.

"Yeah, that YouTube thing, that's just a fad, that's not going anywhere!"

(throws chair across room)

I don't give a shit about Ballmer, but he specifically said the exact opposite of what you are accusing him of. Looks like he was just questioning whether it was worth it or could Google have done it anyhow.

Now I envision a series of three-panel comic strips about Ballmer where the last panel is always him throwing a chair across the room.

You know, that's actually pretty funny.

If I had a shred of creative talent, I would do it myself...

RyanS wrote:

Yeah, I should have mentioned that there might be markets outside consumer phones. Oh, I did.

And wow, there might be markets outside what Jim Z wants. Amazing.

Not like x86 software is installed on small or embedded devices anywhere. Oh, it is. Why would they want smaller, more powerful and more efficient hardware?

Lemme 'splain. No, there is too much. Lemme sum up- I'm not saying there is no market for something like Medfield; in fact, I think it'd be ideal for Surface Pro in place of the power-burning i5 it has. I don't see the value proposition for smartphones. Intel's pushing Medfield as a smartphone solution but I'm questioning its value there.

You know, all these failures -- G+, Microsoft's video, Bing, and all the rest, suggest that "lock in" doesn't require one to purchase hundreds of dollars of software. It can be as simple as habit.

This suggests to me that despite frequent cries to the contrary, it's not going to be as easy to push Android aside as some around here think. iOS' lock in, similarly, may be more the familiarity of its conventions and its base line services than the sunk cost of the various apps (many of which are games and have a shelf life anyway).

I think this discussion does provide a reasonable entry point into Ballmer's mind. He seems to think Microsoft is like IBM once (kind of) was -- all they have to do is replicate someone else's product and the logo will carry the day. And yet, it doesn't.

Maybe Google's acquisition of You Tube was smarter than it looks.

I mean, there really isn't a lot wrong with either G+ or Bing -- it's just that nobody goes there, particiularly, and there's no compelling reason for people to change their habits. Maybe you can point to various ways the losers are behind (I certainly don't find Bing's search "as good") but I wonder if a lot of this is just habit. There are probably 50 million US consumers, at least, that haven't really given Bing a fair shot. They just go to Google because it works well (enough?) and that's what they're used to doing.

YouTube is network effect. Just like Facebook. It won the lock-in war before anyone actually challenged it. It's the default place you put videos on the internet. To Google's credit they figured it out fairly quickly just bought it.

[You've got to ask] could Google do whatever it is they're hoping to buy without paying $1.6 billion? Is YouTube really some permanent, long-term thing, or is it a fashion? I'm not saying it is a fashion. But every time we do valuations, I wonder if we can afford to keep this hot for 10 years. I'm sure somebody at Google has got to do the same analysis, because even $1.6 billion is more than 1% of their market cap.

So clearly they didn't feel that they could roll it internally and do as well, or they need it faster, or whatever.

He means iPod. I think this post still applies, though. Apple had room to make mistakes, learn, figure stuff out, etc in the early mp3 player market. Up against a strengthening Android and a powerful Apple in tablets, Microsoft has a *lot* less room.

That said, I suspect they still have some room, and their hold on enterprise will be key.

Same for the surface--there is really nothing wrong with it, improvements will be just that.

Rather idealistic view isn't that? The point of any product is to make a profit. If no one buys the surface, it won't matter how intrinsically good it is, it will cease to exist. Good luck to them, but initial reviews point out one too many design flaws, such has ho-hum battery life, hot running temperatures, kickstand requiring a completely flat surface. It adds up to a complicated product, in comparison to the iPad, which people 'get'. I guess we'll all find out how well the surface sells soon enough.

Same for the surface--there is really nothing wrong with it, improvements will be just that.

Rather idealistic view isn't that? The point of any product is to make a profit. If no one buys the surface, it won't matter how intrinsically good it is, it will cease to exist. Good luck to them, but initial reviews point out one too many design flaws, such has ho-hum battery life, hot running temperatures, kickstand requiring a completely flat surface. It adds up to a complicated product, in comparison to the iPad, which people 'get'. I guess we'll all find out how well the surface sells soon enough.

None of those "design flaws" are deal breakers. You could make a similar list on ipad, claiming it was a "flawed" product, having too many design faults.

Rather idealistic view isn't that? The point of any product is to make a profit. If no one buys the surface, it won't matter how intrinsically good it is, it will cease to exist

Very few tech products make money from day one. It usually takes a release or two. Windows 3.0, after all, was the first really successful Windows and Window 3.1 even more so. Nobody remembers WIndows 1.0 or Windows 2.0.

That said, you can still miss markets. The real question for the moment is volume more than profit. If Surface doesn't get into enough hands, it may never do. But, that's not a profit statement, rather a volume one for the next few years.

What is your basis for this assertion? Most of the reviews I've seen do not recommend a purchase of the surface pro, which leads me to think that, at least for some, these flaws are deal breakers. Personally, the facts that it's much thicker, heavier, and has shorter battery life than a tablet, while not resting comfortably in the lap with the keyboard set up, sure seem like deal breakers to me.

He means iPod. I think .... Apple had room to make mistakes, learn, figure stuff out, etc in the early mp3 player market.

I disagree pretty strongly with the "mistake" angle here. Firewire was a huge part of what made the original iPod a success. Competing mp3 players back in 2001 were USB1, and USB2 was unavailable on Macs and rare on PCs at the time. Using Firewire made the original iPod work in a way that USB1 mp3 players just couldn't - you could transfer your music and then re-transfer, change what you keep on the device etc all in a very reasonable amount of time. It was night and day different from what came before. It was fun, rather than painful, to use.

The success of the original FW Mac-only iPod is what allowed Apple to get their volumes up and prices down, and gain a substantial advantage over competitors.

Now, not transitioning to PC-compatibility and, eventually, USB2 in a timely way, as USB2 became widely available, would have been a mistake. But it's a mistake Apple did not make.

Quote:

Up against a strengthening Android and a powerful Apple in tablets, Microsoft has a *lot* less room. That said, I suspect they still have some room, and their hold on enterprise will be key.

Yes, I think they still have time and room to make an impact. It's a funny argument to make perhaps, but I don't think anyone really expected MS to get this right on the first iteration. In my mind the question remains primarily how good will Win8 hybrid devices be in 2014.

There is no advantage in having the same software across multiple devices?

How would you expect software such as . . . Oh, I don't know, (Let's throw some shit out there) AutoCAD, CATIA, SolidWorks, MicroStation, AutoStudio etc. to scale and run effectively/efficiently on the 5 to 10-inch (I'll even give you 12-inch!) screens of phones/tablet devices? And if you custom-tailor to each form factor then you're bound to lose UI "consistency" at the very least.

To be clear, people were complaining about the small screen sizes *years ago*, and that's why these folks went to *desktops* (and get this: laptops/notebooks too) with larger, and larger screens.

I see little advantage in trying to maintain the same familiar UI/paradigm of the desktop, and trying to shoehorn it onto a tablet just because someone believes it's a Good Idea®.

No. I'm not running the "same software" on my phone as I am on my desktop. I don't want to. x86 owns the desktop/laptop because of 30 years of desktop/server software. None of that is relevant to handheld devices. Windows Mobile was basically Windows on a phone, and it sucked ass.

^^This.

This is exactly what ZZ, and Ryan don't seem to understand. Ryan seems to want what amounts to a super-flat, super light device that is essentially only a "screen" that ranges in size from 5-inches to oh . . . I don't know 30-inches? (think that's large enough to carry around comfortably, guys?), and runs TODAY"S SOFTWARE the same exact way as it runs on a traditional desktop.

That just seems silly because as OC pointed out earlier (or was it someone else?). It might be said that the iDevices sold precisely because they *weren't* following the same familiar desktop UI paradigm.